


Lonely, Dark, and Deep

by nirejseki, robininthelabyrinth (nirejseki)



Category: Naruto
Genre: Codependency, Eldritch, Gen, Gods, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Misunderstandings, Mutual Pining, Suicidal Thoughts, Unhealthy Relationships, Worldbuilding, not as creepy as the summary makes it sound
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-01
Updated: 2019-12-30
Packaged: 2020-07-28 21:01:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 16,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20070523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nirejseki/pseuds/nirejseki, https://archiveofourown.org/users/nirejseki/pseuds/robininthelabyrinth
Summary: Hashirama was always going to have to leave Konoha behind one day, but no one was expecting for it to happen so soon.Tobirama falls apart without his brother.Madara, mad and bitter and preparing to leave himself, finds that he's now without his best friend and responsible for a village he'd just about given up on.And now it seems like there's something not quite right with the forest...





	1. Prologue

The stories say:_ One day the Shodaime Hokage stood up –_

* * *

Tobirama doesn't know how he missed it. 

He can point to all the tasks he's taken onto himself, how much of the village is left to build, the questions to answer and institutions to set up if Hashirama's peace is to be lasting, but it's all nothing but excuses.

Hashirama's his _brother_. He should have noticed; he should have seen.

He should have _understood_.

The way Hashirama went quiet more often, gaze going distant. Less emotional, more thoughtful. Less himself.

The way Hashirama took so many walks through the village, running his hands along the many houses he'd built for everyone.

The way Hashirama was so often absent from the home he shared with Mito, where Tobirama too still lived; how the care of his children fell more and more on Mito or their teachers at the academy. Hashirama had always been a little neglectful, being as busy as he was - being clan leader, war-leader, and now Hokage - but his visits home grew even rarer as he spent nights in his office.

Not working. Just - quiet.

Peaceful.

Tobirama had mistakenly ascribed his brother's uncharacteristic solemnity to Madara, who a blind idiot could tell was gearing up to leave the village for good, probably soon. He'd nearly left several times before, each time with Hashirama convincing him to stay, but this time Hashirama had made no efforts to seek his friend out while he sulked and raged.

Tobirama thought his brother was giving up on Madara at last.

He should have known better.

He should have realized what was really happening.

If he'd only realized, he could have tried to stop it, and he will never forgive himself for having failed.

He will never stop hating himself for it.

Unsurprisingly, given his schedule, he was in the office when it happened.

It wasn't - it wasn't as grand as the stories later made it out to be. It was quiet. Simple. _Peaceful_ \- and oh, Tobirama could learn to hate that word, for all that he's given his life to it.

Just like the stories say, one day Hashirama just - stood up.

"I have to go," he said quietly.

It was so quiet that Tobirama almost missed it. "Hn? Go? Go where?" he asked, mind more on the newest iteration of the village mission roster than anything else. They were finally starting to be profitable again, at long last, and the additional funds meant that a stable Konoha, long-sought, was finally just around the corner. "Another walk?"

"I have to go," Hashirama said, and he was smiling.

Thinking back on it, it was the smile that made Tobirama realize that something was wrong. 

Hashirama didn't smile like that, distant and dreamy; he always felt things too strongly, too immediately, and always expressed his joy and sorrow with equal strength. He was always _present_, always thinking that everything was so important. 

"Anija?" Tobirama asked, suddenly wary - but too late, far too late.

"It's time," Hashirama said simply, as if he'd known it was coming, as if he'd been _waiting_ for it. He took off the hat that they'd made the symbol of village leadership and put it on Tobirama's desk. "You can take care of things now."

Tobirama stared, his stomach twisting in rising horror, in realization - _no_, he remembers thinking, _no, not yet, it can't be_, but of course it was.

"But -"

"I wanted Madara to go next," Hashirama said mildly. Mild, calm, the way Hashirama never is, least of all about his best friend: Tobriama should have _known_. "But I don't know if he's staying. So you can do it."

"Anija -" Tobirama rose to his feet. "Anija, no – it's too _soon_ – there’s still so much left –"

But Hashirama's eyes were already empty, staring through him to see only the forest behind him, and Tobirama knew that his protestations were in vain. His brother might have said he had to go, but he was already gone.

There are no further farewells. That much the stories have right: _one day the Shodaime Hokage stood up; he put down the role of Hokage and walked away into the forest, and he never came back out_, they say, and that is what happened.

But the stories are wrong, too: there was no secret mission. No intentional sacrifice for the betterment of the village, no terrible task to be undertaken whose success could only be identified when the village was not destroyed, nothing like that.

Just Tobirama left kneeling on the floor of his office, clutching the hat with fingers gone white from the pressure and staring after his brother, his brother who is _gone_, his heart splintering into a thousand pieces –

Just Hashirama, and the forest.

* * *

_He was a Sage, you know_, the stories say. _They say he became one with the trees. Sometimes, if you look into the woods late at night, it's almost as if you can see him there!_


	2. Chapter 2

Madara knows exactly how he missed it.

He wasn't _looking_.

He was consumed by his anger, by his grief, seeing the Izuna-that-could-have-been in every corner of the village. Shopping at the brand new market in the center of town, trying out all the new restaurants that were opening up, flirting outrageously with all the women and some of the men, sitting on the field with a lover and watching the fireworks that marked the anniversary of the founding of the village -

This village is everything he dreamed of as a child, but his brother's death makes it all taste of ash.

Pointless. Pointless! He’s betraying Izuna's final wishes every minute he stays, they all are, every Uchiha every minute their clan submits itself to Senju rule.

But his clan doesn't listen to him anymore.

(_Warmonger_, they whisper, thinking he wants to go back to the way it was before, children dying out on frontlines where they don’t belong. _Eye-stealer_, like he would _ever_.)

The stone tablet showed him another way, though, a better way, a way to make the world peaceful for _good_. If it causes some death along the way – he doesn't want to think about that. He doesn’t want to think of how much destruction this path will cause, how much betrayal and devastation.

Maybe if the village had chosen him over Hashirama and his empty dreams of peace through love, there could have been another way – but no.

The tablet offers the only real way forward. 

It’s what Izuna would have wanted, he tells himself, and he believes it, too.

Every time before, when his rage threatened to overcome him, Hashirama always seemed to know to come by: some new task that needed to be done, some distraction, something wonderful to show him in their growing village. But this time, Hashirama didn’t come.

_Even Hashirama’s given up on me_, Madara remembers thinking, wild and bitter. _Let him stay in his village with its fake peace, then – but I won’t be here. I won’t be deceived_.

He’d settled on leaving at the end of the week and set about putting his affairs in order – he’d expected that to cause Hashirama to come running, but he hadn’t. Madara could have just left then, probably should have, but some little part of him that is still a child skipping stones by the riverbank can’t imagine leaving without giving Hashirama one last chance to convince him to stay.

When Hashirama still does not come, Madara goes to find him. 

What he finds –

Tobirama is crying.

That’s the first thing he remembers – the first really clear image in weeks, to be honest, even months, in all the time that has passed ever since Izuna died – a shock like a kunai plunged directly his heart, shock so strong that it penetrates even the fog of grief and rage that always surrounds him now.

Tobirama _never_ cries.

Previously, if asked, Madara would have said he wasn’t even sure the man _could_. As far as Madara knew, the man hadn’t even cried as a child, not even at the deaths of his own brothers: soulless and heartless, existing but not living, an automaton that mocked Madara by continuing to breathe when vibrant, exuberant Izuna did not.

But doubts aside, Madara cannot deny what his eyes are seeing: Tobirama is crying. 

And he isn’t crying the way Madara would have imagined Tobirama might cry, to the extent he’d thought of it: something all stoic and dignified and maybe a single tear glistening on his cheek for half a second before he wiped it away and buried his pain.

No, this is _ugly_ – Tobirama is on his knees, curled over on himself, his shoulders heaving and tears streaming down his face, mouth agape with silent screams of agony.

“Have you been poisoned?” Madara demands, alarmed, horrified; it’s one thing to demand the man’s death, knowing that Hashirama would never agree – another thing entirely to watch him die right there in front of him by some hand other than his own, robbing Hashirama of his last brother the way Madara was robbed. Whatever their differences, whatever betrayal Madara has planned for the future, Hashirama is still too dear to Madara for him to wish such a fate on him. “You need a healer –” 

Tobirama shakes his head.

“A jutsu, then?” Madara asks, immediately thinking about what jutsu-breakers he knows, and about the strategic vulnerability such an attack presents to the village – if someone had a jutsu that could take out _Tobirama_ in the middle of Konoha, they were all at risk, every one of them. “Some sort of long-distance torture –”

“No,” Tobirama says, his voice raspy and wet. “Nothing like that.” 

Madara stares at him. “Then what…?”

“Hashirama is gone.”

That’s when Madara sees the hat Tobirama is bent over, wrapping his body around it as if he’s trying futilely to protect it even as the pressure of his fingers cause furrows to run through it.

The ridiculous, stupid hat that somehow everyone had decided signified the position of Hokage.

Hashirama’s hat.

Hashirama –

“Gone?” he says faintly, and he finds suddenly that he’s sitting on the floor when a second ago he’d been standing. 

It cannot be true. It _cannot be_.

Hashirama – he’d seen him just the day before, walking through the village with that strange new distant look in his eyes. He’d been _fine_. How could he be gone?

(Losing Izuna had destroyed the foundation of Madara’s life – but somehow Madara’d never even _considered_ the possibility of losing Hashirama, not to anything but his own hand. They were best friends, they were mortal enemies, they were the possibility of something more, some deep and fundamental binding together of their very souls, but they were above all else _each other’s_.)

Tobirama nods mutely, as if in saying that much he’d used up whatever store of words he had, and goes back to crying. Here are the tears Madara couldn’t shed for Izuna, frozen in grief as he has been, and all the ones Tobirama hadn’t shed for his younger brothers, too.

All of them are here, now, the sobs ripping their way through Tobirama’s body and it must be true, then, what he says, but Madara still can’t believe it.

“How?” he asks, even though he doesn’t really want to know. The thought of Hashirama, brilliant powerful Hashirama, _dead_ – a thousand images pulled from a thousand battlefields spring into Madara’s mind at once, Hashirama’s lips bloody from the last rasp of breath, face bloated from drowning, body charred to ashes from fire or lightning, fingers ripped apart from trying to dig his way to the surface for air…so many ways to die.

All of it meaningless. In the end the result is the same: Hashirama, dead.

_Hashirama_, dead.

That’s when the anger steals in underneath the grief.

“No,” Madara says, because the _how_ is unimportant. What matters is – “_Who_?”

_Tell me who to blame_, he means, _tell me I can get revenge, tell me I can make this better by hurting whoever hurt him_ – but Tobirama is already shaking his head.

“Peace,” he says, trying to use his sleeve to wipe at his eyes, a fairly futile endeavor. “His peace. _Your_ peace. That’s all.”

Madara frowns, confusing mixing with the anger, staying his always far-too-ready hand. “What? What are you talking about?”

He can’t have heard that right.

Tobirama laughs, sharp and jagged and sounding like it hurt him to do. “You _Uchiha_,” he says. “You and your curse of hatred, your Sharingan born of pain…did it never occur to you that the Senju have a flaw, too?”

It hadn’t. Not once.

“Everyone knows the Uchiha love too much, too selfishly,” Tobirama says, his lips pulled back into a snarl that’s more of a grimace of pain than anything else. “Well, we Senju have the opposite problem.”

“What, you love the whole world, and it’s a _problem_?” Madara sneers.

“_Yes_, it’s a problem!” Tobirama spits back at him. “Hashirama forgets he has children because his village, his _peace_, is more important to him. My father put defeating the Uchiha above everything – he went to battle the day after my mother died, just because it would give our side the slightest additional advantage in positioning.”

Madara knows this to be true, and it’s always puzzled him. Putting Butsuma aside, how could Hashirama, who loves so strongly, be so neglectful?

Tobirama shakes his head at Madara’s confusion. “You really don’t know, do you?” he asks, his shoulders sagging. “You Uchiha have love. We Senju have _principles_ – one principle for each person, a thousand or more to choose from, but from that principle we do not bend lest we break, and our minds doom us as surely as your hearts do you.”

Madara opens his mouth, then closes it. He’s never thought – that makes no _sense _– but it does. 

It actually does make sense, in a sick sort of way.

No wonder Butsuma barely batted an eye when Hashirama declared himself willing to oppose his own clan over the question of peace, for all his rage that his son was consorting with Madara in the first place. It had been as if Hashirama’s blasphemous choice hadn’t really surprised him, and as far as Madara knew Hashirama had never suffered any serious consequences for making it – not the way Madara would have, if he’d chosen the same.

So many stories, over the years, all now explained –

Senju inexplicably making last stands when no sacrifice really seemed to be called for. 

Senju fighting like demons possessed, unwilling to ever yield, for no apparent reason.

Senju who terrified even the Uchiha with the extent to which they would seek revenge not for a beloved person, which was something that every Uchiha could understand, but simply for a _cause_…

Madara opens his mouth to ask what Tobirama’s principle is, but – he knows.

Tobirama, ever the odd duckling of his family, devoted his life to that most un-Senju of principles, a goal more properly fit for an Uchiha: the happiness of his brothers. 

No wonder he couldn’t forgive the Uchiha for his younger brother’s death, even if that too-logical mind of his agreed to give up revenge in favor of working with them for the greater good that was Hashirama’s dream of a peaceful and unified village. 

No wonder he didn’t trust them – he’s too much _like_ them. He knows how they feel, how they grieve, how they _rage_. In his position, Madara wouldn’t trust his clan either – there’s a reason they usually kill people who end up like Madara is now.

This is the first time it’s occurred to Madara to wonder why they _haven’t_. 

Tobirama has no brothers left, now. Just like Madara.

“What happened?” Madara asks, suddenly desperate to know. “What happened to Hashirama?” 

Tobirama’s shoulders move, a pale imitation of his usual caustic shrug. “He has the Mokuton,” he says. “It’s – it’s like your Sharingan, like your Mangekyo, only much, much less common. It’s not _necessary_, we all suffer from our principles regardless, but having it makes the effects of it far worse. Hashirama had it worst of all.”

“But Hashirama’s principle is the _village_,” Madara says, still stubborn. “Even if Hashirama was willing to devote everything to it –”

And he was, Madara _knew_ he was: he would kill Madara for it, if it came to that – 

No. Not just that.

That isn’t the truest measure of Hashirama’s devotion, killing Madara, not the way he thought it’d be – now that he can think clearly, though, he knows what is. 

Hashirama – he would even have killed _Tobirama_ for the village, wouldn’t he?

When Madara, maddened by Izuna’s death, had demanded Hashirama kill Tobirama or himself as the price of peace between them, Hashirama had only thanked him for offering him the option. 

Madara had thought that was because Hashirama trusted Madara not to make him pay the price, that he wanted to demonstrate that he, too, loved his brother – and even if he thought Madara did mean it, it was an easy choice, really; the same choice Madara would have made, the same choice any Uchiha would make. Now for the first time it occurs to him that perhaps Hashirama had thanked him not because of that, but rather because if Madara _hadn’t_ given him the choice, if Madara had set the price of peace as Tobirama’s blood or nothing, Hashirama would have –

He would have –

(Tobirama had been afraid, when Madara had named his price. The knuckles of the fingers wrapped around his sword had been white, Madara’s Sharingan reminds him, and he’d been so afraid – afraid, yes, but strangely resigned, too. He’d asked if Hashirama would kill him for the sake of his village, for Madara’s sake. And if Hashirama hadn’t loved his brother just a little bit more than he loved himself, _he might have done it_.)

Madara shakes his head to try to banish the trembling of his heart and continues. “Even if Hashirama was willing to give up everything for the village, why would that kill him? How?”

“Because Hashirama’s principle isn’t a village,” Tobirama says. “It’s _peace_. The Mokuton…the old legends of the Senju say that for all that we’re a clan without a single limit, the thousand talents, the very first one we ever had was the Mokuton, a gift from the forest. They say that every few generations, we’re gifted again: the forest will lend someone its strength to fight for what they believe in, but it’s a _loan_. If that person dies in battle, their body is returned to the forest as tribute. If they _don’t_ die, if they live long enough to see their dream fulfilled…it takes them back.”

Madara doesn’t like the sound of that.

“What happened to Hashirama?” he demands again, seized by a sudden fear. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”


	3. Chapter 3

“Dead?”

Tobirama laughs, as painfully as the last time - more a gargling noise than anything else.

“He’s _gone_. He’s gone to the forest. He stood up and said that I had to take the hat and the job because he couldn’t be sure that you’d be staying, and then he went.”

“If all he did was _go_, we can bring him _back_,” Madara shouts, rising to his knees. “You stupid –”

“There’s _nothing there_ to bring back!” Tobirama shouts back. “Haven’t you _noticed_? Didn’t you _see_? The Uchiha are burdened with a curse of the heart; the Senju with one of the mind – what do you think was the first thing the forest _took_?”

Madara hesitates.

(Hashirama didn’t come to talk him out of his rage. Hashirama didn’t look at him as he passed through the village. Hashirama looked at everything with a distance that was unusual to him, looking always out at the forest, and sometimes it seemed like he needed an extra second to wake up to hear what the people around him were saying – as if it wasn’t important, no matter what it was, as if _nothing_ was as important as what he thinking about out in the forest – as if his mind was already gone elsewhere…)

“At least we’ll have peace,” Tobirama says, scrubbing his face now in earnest, turning his cheeks and eyes red with the pressure of his palms. “Konohagakure…you named this place better than you realized. The forest itself will defend us, at least until it’s fully taken back what belongs to it.”

It takes a second for Madara, whose clan believes in consigning corpses to the flame, to realize what Tobirama is talking about. The Senju bury their dead, most of the time, but sometimes they do something they call sky burials – a barbaric custom, in Madara’s opinion, where they just dump a body out there for the animals and the sun to disintegrate into dirt. And if what Tobirama is saying is true, then that means the forest itself will defend their village, defend their peace, until it has wholly consumed Hashirama’s body, like the bodies of the unfortunate who never left the battlefield, stripped down to the very bones –

Madara shudders at the thought.

“We should still go look for him,” he says. “To – to offer an alternative, if nothing else.”

To kill him, he means, as an act of mercy.

“What do you care?” Tobirama scoffs. “You’re going to leave anyway.”

Madara opens his mouth – but what can he say? He _was_ going to leave – leave, and bring back a bijuu, the kyuubi, turn it into a weapon aimed at Hashirama and all that he loves to force Hashirama to step up and kill him –

Hashirama would have killed him, Madara knows now. He would have, but it wouldn’t have meant what Madara wanted it to mean. For an Uchiha, giving your life to someone you love, forcing them to kill you, is the greatest sacrifice of all – the only way to achieve the Mangekyo, the greatest of their powers. If Hashirama had been an Uchiha, Madara’s death would have _meant_ something: a farewell gift, however poisonous, a memory to stay with him forever. But for a Senju…

(Hashirama would have killed even Tobirama for peace, sacrificed the reason for his peace for the reality of it, and Madara’s never going to un-know that. And somehow, though he doesn’t know quite why, that changes _everything_.)

“I’m still his friend,” he says helpless.

“And I’m his _brother_,” Tobirama says, looking down at the hat with dull eyes. “I’m his brother, and he entrusted the village to me. He would have given it to you, but you’re leaving, so he gave it to me.”

Madara feels a stab of pain, a sudden stroke of insight and empathy.

How must it feel, to love someone as much as an Uchiha does, and yet to know at every moment that they would sacrifice you or cast you aside for their goals? Worse: to give as much of yourself to someone as Tobirama has given to Hashirama, and then, in the end, to still be _second best_ – not even to a dream, no, but to an _enemy_…

Madara doesn’t really need to kill Tobirama to destroy his life the way Tobirama destroyed his when he struck down Izuna, does he?

He’s done it already, just by existing.

“We should go look for him,” he says again, this time stronger. His head feels clear, somehow, like he’s just broken the surface of an ocean he hadn’t even known he was drowning in. “I’ll tell him – I’ll tell him I’ll stay. He deserves that happiness, before he’s gone.”

Tobirama looks at him, suspicious, but it’s too late for him: Madara knows his weakness now, the weakness Izuna spent his whole life searching for and never found even though it was right in front of his nose.

For Hashirama’s happiness, however marginal, Tobirama will agree to anything.

They go out into the forest, looking, but for all that Tobirama is the finest sensor in Fire Country and maybe the world, for all that Madara is the finest tracker of the Uchiha clan now that Izuna is gone, they can’t find him.

His footsteps disappear in a grove of trees, as if he had suddenly taken wing or sunk into the earth, leaving no trace behind him.

“Do you know any jutsu to help find bones?” Madara jokes after a few hours of fruitless searching. They’re searching through bushes at this point, just in case Hashirama collapsed, though neither of them can really imagine that.

“I can resurrect the dead imperfectly, which, yes, involves a method for locating bone fragments,” Tobirama replies from where he’s perched in a tree, eyes closed and sensor abilities lashing out strongly enough that Madara can feel the force of it from several meters away. “I've already used it. There are no bones here beyond those of animals.”

Madara pauses for a long moment. He’s pretty sure he didn’t know that Tobirama could do that.

“When you say you can resurrect the dead –” he starts.

“Hashirama made it kinjutsu,” Tobirama says, leaping down from the tree. “I don’t think he’s ever put something on the forbidden scroll so fast…It doesn’t work right, anyway, or else I’d have younger brothers alive today.”

An excellent point.

“Nevertheless, out of curiosity…”

“It rips the souls of the dead out of the Pure Lands, resurrecting them as weapons in unbreakable clay bodies fixed forever at the time of their death. I don’t know if their souls return to the Pure Lands afterwards, either, or if they’re condemned to – wandering.”

Madara grimaces. He would never impose such a horrific half-life and second death on Izuna, no matter how dearly he wishes he could see him again.

(He’s not sure he would have thought that way even a few hours ago. He’s not sure he would have _cared_, even though he should have; he thinks he might have caused Izuna any amount of pain if it would only alleviate his own. He has the distinct suspicion that Hashirama might have saved him again, all unknowing: no shock any less terrible would have been enough to wake Madara up from the nightmare he’d created for himself. Seriously, Madara's going to have to have a stern talk with his clan - why in the world did they leave him alive? Don't they know the damage an Uchiha maddened by loss can do? To those around him, to their clan, to the world? What were they _thinking_?)

“Are you really staying?” Tobirama asks. He’s suddenly standing there in front of Madara, his eyes still redder than usual. “Or was that just something you were going to say to Hashirama to ease his passage to the next world? I'm not going to stop you if you go, but I'd like to know now so that I know whether to rely on you or not going forward.”

Madara hesitates.

Tobirama clearly needs the help - that much is obvious, just look at him - but can he really give up his goals like that?

The stone tablet he had found had said that the only way to save the Uchiha clan was through the path it offered, the Infinite Tsukuyomi…but without Hashirama, could that path even be achieved? It depended on the Rinnegan, after all, a merging of Senju and Uchiha, and it feels somehow unsatisfying for the Senju blood he needs to come from anyone but Hashirama. If it’s even possible for other blood to serve the purpose – Hashirama was the only Senju with the Mokuton, after all…

Still, he can’t give up that path. If it really is the only way…

Hmm.

Maybe he doesn't _have_ to give up his path - and maybe his path doesn't necessarily mean he has to give up on the village, either.

Maybe he can have _both_.

_Hashirama_ would never have agreed to such a plan, too full of love and hope and naïve belief in humanity, but _Tobirama_ – as much as Madara hates the man for what he took from him, for Izuna's untimely death, he’s no longer so overwhelmed with grief as to be unable to think straight. And Tobirama has always had that marvelous combination of extreme curiosity and fairly uncertain grasp of ethics…

“I’ll stay,” Madara says, deciding even as he spoke. “I’ll stay and help you run the village, the way I should’ve helped Hashirama. But in return, I want your help with something.”

Tobirama crosses his arms. He’s suspicious; of course he is. Madara doesn’t blame him. Convincing him will not be easy, but Madara is quite certain he can do it.

“Come, let’s walk back; I’ll tell you as we go,” Madara says, turning his back on the forest. “You see, there’s a legend among the Uchiha of a dojustu more powerful than the Sharingan: we call it the Rinnegan…”


	4. 4

Tobirama is an amazing Nidaime.

Madara is increasingly convinced, watching him, that it was a role he was always meant to play, no matter how everything else might have panned out. Oh, he's still not charismatic in the way Hashirama was or Madara is, still grumpy and off-putting and inclined to tread all over people, but he's devoted to the well-being of their village with a ruthless single-minded intensity that wins him respect and loyalty from every shinobi and kunoichi and civilian in the village.

They don't love him the way they loved Hashirama, but they _need_ him. He knows the institutions of the village better than anyone else, having thousands of facts at a moment's recall; he remembers everybody’s names and their problems and actually _follows up_ on them; he turns their village from a good idea with promise into something so concrete, so obviously lasting, that the children growing up have started forgetting there was ever anything else.

(Madara's heard some genin talking of what people have started calling, rather dismissively, the warring clans era; they sound almost envious, complaining about the rules that restrict them to D-rank missions rather than fighting in the wars. Of all ridiculous things to resent, the rules that keep them alive..! How quickly people forget the pain of the past.)

Tobirama started working furiously the second they returned to the village, setting a pace that made his previous efforts seem sedate, and no matter how much got done he never seemed to be finished or have time to stop.

Of course, when asked, there was always a good reason for it.

First, the election - Madara, who'd been certain that Hashirama's election had been little more than a ploy designed to exclude him from the position of Hokage, is surprised when Tobirama insists on another one, and on putting Madara's name on the ballot beside his own. Apparently Tobirama actually _believes_ in the principles of democracy, explaining when Madara asks that leadership by appointment or inheritance alone is a recipe for disaster when the inevitable day comes when the wrong person takes up a position to which they are not suited - a disaster that, inevitably, someone would have no choice but to take it upon themselves to fix. 

(There's an old pain in Tobirama's eyes when he says it that he never explains, and Madara wonders again how it happened that Hashirama inherited his position so quickly after Madara took his, when to all appearances Butsuma had appeared to be still going strong. The official story was that he'd died an illness from some hidden injury in battle, and certainly Madara knows that such things are eminently probable, but the timing has always been deeply suspicious.)

They hold the vote and Madara can see, this time, that there is no trickery the way he had been so certain there was the last time. Hashirama's sway over the village is as strong as it ever was, and though a few other clan leaders put their names on the ballot as well - mostly led by the Hyuuga, arrogant little snots that they are - Tobirama wins easily.

And then the work _really_ begins. 

Tobirama has students that he refuses to neglect, three assigned to him by the Academy system he himself set up and three more that he inherited when their own teacher died too early. He trains with them every morning and evening, with occasional training trips, and the rest of the time he handles the work of the village.

Managing to achieve peace and get decisions made while having to pass his ideas through a council composed of all the clan heads would by itself be a full time job, but Tobirama does that and far more – and not, as Madara had always feared, at the expense of his clan.

The Uchiha are given the power of police, tasked both with internal order - unpopular but necessary, particularly in a village where most peoples' primary trade is in blood - and external security, which wins them accolades as heroes. The Hyuuga and Senju are by necessity given a share in the latter, along with the other smaller clans, but the role is clearly subordinate. The face-saving reason given is benefits of coordinating of their security forces under one clear line of authority, but Madara sees his clan toasted as the village's hands, the highest honor a shinobi can give, and knows that it is Tobirama's way of trying to do his best by them.

(External security is easier than it might be - Tobirama is not wrong when he says the forest protects them, and while their location is only technically secret, no foreign army or assassination squad ever seems to reach them. A few individuals with bad intentions slip through, yes, but only the ones who come through the main roads - those who try to cut through the forest are often just found dead, throats ripped out by animals or drowned in quicksand traps that no one had known were there.) 

Security aside, though, there's still everything else to be done, ranging from finances to sanitation to zoning to diplomacy to making sure there's always plenty of food available. And all of that is aside from the brewing strife with Kiri – a would-be war that is only limited to minor skirmishes because of their opponents’ fear of facing shinobi with the combined reputations of Madara and Tobirama together.

(Madara tries not to think of how differently it might have gone if he wasn't here by Tobirama’s side. Having just one shinobi of their caliber available means that the enemy has a target to focus on to the exclusion of all else – having two is much safer, because if they really needed to, they could take shifts in order to keep watch at all times of day and night. They don’t need to, not yet, but they _could_, and that’s its own form of deterrence.)

Yes, Tobirama is an amazing Hokage.

But he's not a _happy_ one.

He works too much, for one thing.

Part of the reason for his endless work is that what used to be divided between Hashirama and Tobirama is now borne by Tobirama alone, but that’s not the only reason. Madara might not be great at paperwork, but neither was Hashirama, and the administrative system that Tobirama creates – levels of review, committees composed of experts, trained secretaries to assist them – ensures that while there’s a lot more paper than there ever was before, most of the village could continue to function even without constant review by its Hokage. 

But Tobirama is not just the Hokage; he’s on every committee, an expert in every subject or forcing himself to learn about it, and where there isn’t enough work to justify staying late, he makes more – village work, his own work creating new jutsus for the village to use, or even personal matters.

Once a week, he meets with Madara to work on their mutual project, as he’s taken to calling Madara’s ‘quest’ for the Rinnegan; twice a week, he devotes a full afternoon to researching new jutsu and seals; three times a week, he visits with Mito and his nephews, who he never abandons the way Hashirama did.

Whether he gets any pleasure from any of it, though...

“Falling apart,” Senju Touka opines, watching him leave the office on the urgent request of one of their infinite committees. She’s helping out in the office while on medical leave between front-line postings – she's easily one of their best scouts, capable of great subtlety but strong as a bear and with the short temper of one, too, and Madara sometimes thinks that Izuna might have liked her a great deal. He can think things like that now, without wanting to kill the entire world and then himself. "I told him not to put his trust in people."

Madara looks sharply at her. He'd been under the impression such things were as little discussed among the Senju as the curse of hatred was among the Uchiha.

She meets his gaze without flinching. "I know you know," she says. "You're his right hand."

"I am not!" Madara exclaims immediately. "We fight all the time!"

She snorts. "Of course you do; doesn’t mean you aren’t. It's a _precedent_ now, don't you realize? Two times at the beginning is enough to make for a tradition. Our village’s system of government now officially consists of a Hokage and his one advisor whose job it is to yell at the Hokage when he makes mistakes - just as Tobirama was for Hashirama. People are already wondering who will fill that role for you." 

Madara stares at her, a chill going down his spine. "For me?" 

"You must know that you’re the obvious next candidate -"

"I know _that_. But why are people speculating about me at all? Tobirama is doing a fantastic job. They can’t possibly want to vote him out." 

Touka looks at him pityingly. "Surely you know."

“Know _what_?”

“Do you think he’s working so hard to set up a stable system of government for _fun_?” she asks. “He’s making sure that the village will continue to function no matter who gets appointed as his successor. The second he thinks he’s fulfilled all of his obligations – the village stable and prospering, his students graduated, whatever that project is that he’s working on with you finished – he’s going to go to join Hashirama.” 

Madara flinches.

Yes. He did know that. 

He’d just…been trying not to think about it. Part of it was the traditional discomfort with shinobi suicides – common, far too common, though less now that they had a semblance of peace – and part of it is the distinct feeling that he’d be letting Izuna down if he permitted his brother’s best rival to die by his own hand.

(In his rage and madness he’d somehow forgotten that for however much Izuna distrusted the Senju as a whole, he’d always been rather fond of Tobirama personally – _my greatest challenge_, he used to say, eyes sparkling with life as he thought up new ways to fight him, an excitement that put a smile on his face in a way nothing else could during those terrible winters when they were living off of little more than dreams of the future. _My eternal rival, as those _awful_ Maito people like to say_.)

“That’s what happens when you put your trust in people,” Touka concludes, looking back down at the work she’s been doing. “Take those people away, and what do you have? Nothing. The only reason he’s not dead already is because Hashirama’s last request was for him to care for the village.” 

This is probably true.

“Is there any way to _stop_ it?” Madara finally asks. 

Touka looks amused. “Rethinking your position on my little cousin?”

“No! Just…”

“He’s growing on you? Not unlike mold on bread?”

Madara is not going to laugh. He’s _not_. He’s being _serious_.

“I have an ongoing project with him,” he says instead. “I don’t want him to disappear before that’s done.”

They’re making ridiculous amounts of progress, actually; Madara’s not a scientist the way Tobirama is and he hadn’t realized the difference it would make. At the beginning, he thought Tobirama took too many notes, but as they continued experimenting (Hashirama’s amazing recuperative abilities had apparently been a subject of significant scientific interest for years, which meant that Tobirama had _lots _of his brother’s blood hidden away as samples in his labs, enough for dozens and dozens of experiments without even making a significant dent in the pile) they were able to cross-compare that data and let it lead them wherever it could go.

Sure, Tobirama also vetoed any plan that involved Madara testing their results on himself, but given that the first test they’d done on a sample -

(_eyeballs are mostly water_, Tobirama said dismissively, _give me three weeks and I can make a jutsu to create temporary – albeit imperfect – replacements to use in the experiments_, and terrifyingly enough he actually _had_)

\- had caused the sample eyes to literally explode, Madara thinks that was probably a good idea.

Tobirama’s also been making noises recently about wanting to see the stone tablet even though he won’t be able to read the text itself (he extracted more of the details from Madara by arguing that there might be hidden clues in the precise text about the Rinnegan, though obviously Madara hasn’t explained the exact nature of the Infinite Tsukuyomi), which Madara is very strongly _against _due to his sincere belief that Tobirama will find a way to read it even without a Sharingan because the man is just _like that_, but which he is starting to think might be inevitable.

Unless Tobirama dies first, of course.

“He won’t stick around just for a _project_,” Touka says disdainfully. She doesn’t ask what they’re working on; she clearly doesn’t give a fig for science except for the edge it gives her in battle, which is a position Madara can respect. “No matter how interesting. Listen, it’s practically the unofficial Senju clan motto: ‘on this point we do not bend but only break.’ He put everything he had to live for in Hashirama, and Hashirama is gone. He’s broken. That’s it. There’s nothing else to it.”

“Even the curse of hatred can be broken,” Madara points out. He doesn’t need to point at himself as a walking, talking example; he feels that’s pretty much implied. “I understand that his principle is his brothers’ happiness, which he can’t achieve anymore, but still! There must be _something_ that can save him from himself.”

“Sure. Find him a new brother.”

“Be _serious_.”

“I _am_. I mean, maybe not a brother, but something like it; I’m pretty sure he was smart enough to make his principle something more like ‘loved ones’ rather than ‘brothers’ to avoid having to deal with an unexpected sister or something...shouldn’t this be clear to you? Your own grief about losing your brother persisted until you were hit with the shock of losing another one, right?”

That’s not exactly how Madara would have put it, given how complicated and sometimes not-entirely-fraternal his relationship with Hashirama was, the way there was always an unspoken sense of anticipation that there could be much more between them, but – yes. Basically.

“That’s the problem with people,” Touka says. “People die. Ideas live forever.”

Madara looks at her sidelong. “What’s your ‘idea’, then?”

“None of your fucking business is what it is.”

Right. Not talked about, got it.

A long few moments of silence.

“…where would you even _get_ someone a new brother?”

“That’s it!” Touka exclaims, standing up. “I give up!” 

Madara frowns as he watches her storm out. No wonder Izuna was always so annoyed when he did that – she didn’t even answer his question! 

(The idea that maybe there _isn’t_ an answer – that maybe Tobirama is going to die sooner rather than later, and it was even odds whether it would be by his own hand or if he’d go the traditional route of volunteering for a mission with low odds of success – isn’t worth thinking about. 

_Why_ the death of the man who killed his last brother isn’t worth thinking about…is just going to have to be something else he’s just not going to think about.)


	5. Chapter 5

“I’m sorry,” Tobirama says, and Madara has had _nightmares_ about this man saying that, this man who has, despite all odds, become something very much like a friend over the last year.

Madara dreams of it, sometimes: imagines Tobirama dull-eyed, as he’s gotten more and more in the year since Hashirama’s disappearance, imagines him standing there patiently, having waited to informed Madara of his ensuing death because the bastard is polite enough that he wouldn’t want to leave a co-worker hanging like that but already holding his sword aimed the wrong way round.

It’s the same place every time: he’s always standing and waiting for Madara at the edge of the forest, and that’s the place where it ends, where the sword goes in and cuts off the younger man’s life before its time.

The dream never changes in that respect – it’s never at Tobirama’s home, or in the office of the Hokage, because he’d never leave a mess for someone else to clean up like that. He’d have already cleaned up his precious labs and locked away the more dangerous inventions that he couldn’t quite bring himself to destroy; already have tidied up his desk and finished the paperwork for the next two weeks in advance; already ensured that no one from Konoha would be lingering around to see – _considerate_, that’s what Tobirama was, always thinking about the big picture, thinking about how one thing might affect others, but never really _caring_ about the emotional impact any of it would have.

It’s always at the edge of the forest.

Always at the same place, too, a place Madara knows by now too well: just beyond the western gatehouse, where Konoha spills over from clearing into woods – trees a bit too thick for the age they seem to be, the light dappled from shining in through their branches and leaves, the ground well-covered in grass and weeds and bushes.

The last place Tobirama saw that which that he loved the most, walking away from him.

That’s where he’ll do it. Madara’s sure of it.

That’s why Madara is here, now, making the proposal that he is. He has to do _something_, his very nature rebelling at the thought of simply accepting Tobirama’s untimely death as a foregone conclusion, and this plan is the only thing he can think of to make those dreams go away.

(He can’t let it happen like that. Not – not after watching Izuna die, after losing the only brother he had left; not after knowing that Tobirama is all that’s left of Hashirama, that he’d be losing what little is left of him, too. Not after working with Tobirama this past year, in the time before that; not since he snapped out of that horrible madness brought about by Izuna’s loss and realized that Tobirama is more than just a brother-killer, realized that he’s brilliant and devoted and meticulous, terrible with people and flat in affect even in private, possessed of a wicked sense of humor that he tends to hide more often than not – no.

No. Madara can’t let him just _die_ like that. He _can’t_.)

“I’m sorry,” Tobirama says again, and his eyes are far too wide with surprise to be dull right now. “You’re proposing that we _what_?!”

“Have sex,” Madara says, not entirely understanding what the problem is. “For the sake of the village, of course.”

“Of course,” Tobirama says, his voice a little strangled. “Of course…would you like to explain your logic? I think I might be missing a few crucial steps.”

Madara is not, by nature, a subtle man, and while there’s probably a better way to say it, he’s not one to mince around a delicate subject. Not when there’s this much at stake.

“This village needs you as Hokage,” he explains. “It needs your expertise, your attention to detail, you management skills, your diplomacy…and just as it needs you most, you’re deteriorating.”

Tobirama’s back straightens in offense. “I have never let Konoha down!”

“No, you haven’t. Not once, not even when you probably should,” Madara says dryly. “I meant a _personal_ deterioration. You barely eat, you sleep poorly, your bathing schedule has gotten erratic –”

Admittedly, it’s only gone down to the level a normal person would consider more than reasonable, but for a neat-freak half-fish like Tobirama, that’s shockingly seldom.

Tobirama holds up his hands, still looking bewildered. It’s a rather amusing expression on his normally impassive face. “I admit all that. But – why – no, _how_, exactly, would _ having sex_ solve the – ah – underlying issue? Which I _know_ you’re aware of?”

Neither of them mention Hashirama’s death during daylight hours. It’s better for both of them that way.

Madara shrugs. “Touka said the only thing that would help you with your particular issue is another brother for you to treasure. Now, I can’t get you that short of time travel or resurrecting your parents –”

“Please don’t _ever_ make that suggestion again. I don’t mind resurrecting the dead, but I don’t have any desire to see either of my parents again, much less for the purpose of _breeding _them.”

Hmm, fair enough. Madara concedes that that suggestion sounds a lot more creepy once he thinks it through a bit more.

He certainly wouldn’t want to see _his_ parents again, even putting aside the, er, breeding business.

“– so a lover will have to do as the next best thing,” Madara concludes, deciding to ignore Tobirama’s unhelpful interjection. “You need someone to hold onto to tide you through your loss and a lover is the best sort of distraction for that sort of thing. It’s sometimes used as a solution to the curse of hatred, and given that your particular, uh, _issue _is more akin to the one suffered by Uchiha rather than Senju, I don’t see why there’s isn’t every reason that it would work for you as well.”

Tobirama stares at him. His eyes are wide to the point of being vaguely owlish.

“I’m not suggesting that it’ll _fix_ the issue!” Madara adds quickly, realizing that Tobirama might be offended. One couldn’t replace a beloved brother with a bit of sex, after all, and he’d never suggest as much. If this wasn’t the only thing he’d been able to think of, he wouldn’t have suggested it at all, but – it is. And he’s desperate. “Especially since we’re not, you know, _actually_ lovers. I’m perfectly happy to admit that we barely stand each other at the best of times. But sometimes having the semblance of something can help, even in the absence of the real thing.”

“I…see,” Tobirama says, his face finally abandoning the shocked expression and settling back into normal contemplative lines. “Essentially, you’re suggesting that if we simulate the behavior of lovers, the effects of having a lover might apply regardless of the actual feelings involved and it will…function as a stopgap, essentially?”

“Exactly!”

This is why Madara enjoys working with Tobirama, even though he’s a sharp-tongued bastard with no sense of limits – whatever one can say about the man, one must admit he’s quick on the uptake and very unlikely to reject any idea out of hand, no matter how bizarre.

“Hn. Dare I ask why, exactly, you’re volunteering _yourself_ for this task?”

“Well, I can hardly volunteer anyone _else_ for it without it coming across as extremely unfortunate,” Madara points out, quite reasonably in his view. “Also, having spent the last year of my life cooped up in as very small office trying to establish a village with you, I can now state _definitively_ that you hate humanity. Previous to this, I only suspected as much – but now I’m certain of it.”

Tobirama scowls at him. “I do not hate humanity.”

Madara snorts. “Fine. You hate _vast swathes _of humanity. In a village currently consisting of, at minimum, representatives of every reputable shinobi family in Fire Country, aka the sort of people you might conceivably get along with, the sum total of people you _actually_ _like_ – as opposed to are willing to tolerate in order to achieve your goals – is a list limited to: your students, three of your close cousins, me, and that weird shark-person ambassador from Kiri, and the last one only because of those truly _awful_ fish puns that for some _bizarre_ reason you find amusing.”

“Hoshigaki’s fish puns _are_ amusing.”

“_No one_ got that joke about the clam except for you.”

“It’s not a clam, it’s a freshwater mussel, and I _told_ you, the scientific name of that subspecies is _Anodonta imbicilis_ –”

“And that’s why he was calling the Inuzuka representative a muscle-bound imbecile, yes, I got it after you explained it. It just wasn’t funny. Jokes that someone has to explain are not funny. Listen, if you’re willing to risk the almost inevitable assassination attempt, I can call him instead –”

“She. Not he.”

Madara stops. “What? No.”

“Yes.”

“Impossible!”

Hoshigaki was built like a bookcase, a walking rectangle with arms like tree trunks. It hadn’t even _occurred_ to Madara that conventional gender definitions might apply.

Do sharks even _have_ genders?

Tobirama rolls his eyes. “As you’re not wrong in that she would feel obligated to at least attempt to kill me on behalf of her village, and, perhaps more importantly, is married with children –”

Hoshigaki? Married? _With children_?!

Madara’s going to have nightmares about swarms of baby sharks with legs, he just knows it.

“– let’s _not_ call her. Not that I’ve agreed to your _ridiculous _idea at all.”

Madara crosses his arms and scowls at the intractable bastard.

“It’s not like I’m suggesting we do this for _fun_,” he says. “We’re not in love, of all ridiculous things, and I highly doubt we’re ever going to be more than people who have managed to be able to work together efficiently. But the village needs you, and you clearly need _someone_. Might as well be me.”

Tobirama scowls.

Madara really didn’t want to have to play dirty, but clearly it’s necessary. He was quite serious about being willing to do _anything_ to save Tobirama’s life, and he wasn’t talking about sacrificing his body.

“Hashirama wouldn’t want you to just fade away like this.”

Tobirama flinches.

“And you _know_ he’d be happy about anything that got us to spend more time together outside of work that isn’t sparring or training…”

“I can’t believe you’re using my _brother_ to convince me to _sleep_ _with you_.”

“For the good of the village! Besides, it’s going to _work_.”

Tobirama makes a face, but Madara has no doubt: he knows Tobirama’s weakness, now, and he’s merciless in exploiting it.

(No wonder the Senju make a practice of not telling other people their principles; it’s a weakness just asking to be abused, like an Uchiha making too clear who his most precious people were.)

Sure, Madara’s aware that it’s in bad taste to invoke the name of the man who was, for all practical purposes, his soulmate in order to bed the man’s younger brother – but Hashirama is gone, and anyway, he’s sure it’s what he would have wanted, if it meant Tobirama lived a little longer.

It’s entirely virtuous what he’s doing. _Entirely_. There’s not an iota of selfishness in it.

“One day you’re going to pull that line of reasoning and I’m going to turn you down just to see the surprise on your face,” Tobirama says, standing up. “Very well, come along.”

Madara blinks, having expected to have to argue about this for at least another hour. “Come – where?”

“To bed, of course. Your plan is ridiculous, but if we’re going to try it, we should test our compatibility now. If we don’t have that, there’s no point at all.”

_Entirely virtuous_, Madara reminds himself a few hours later, staring up at the ceiling and unsure if he’s blessing or cursing his entirely unconscious decision to activate his Sharingan at some point, burning the images of white skin beaded with sweat and swollen red lips and heavily lidded eyes in a head thrown back in silent pleasure into his mind forever. _It’s _entirely_ virtuous. Giving Tobirama something to live for is the best thing for the village, and this will help. That’s all that’s going on: the only person I could have loved was Hashirama, and he’s gone – this is just a physical thing, a sacrifice that I’m making. Nothing more._

_It’s not like I’m going to fall in love with him or anything_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> apologies for the long delay! there was a traumatic barely-averted computer loss, then a vacation, and then work went crazy. Updates should proceed more regularly again.


	6. Chapter 6

_I’m sorry, Madara_.

Tobirama can’t help but think of it that way, oddly enough. He wouldn’t have thought that that’d be the thought that keeps plaguing him, but somehow, it is.

Madara, who tried so hard – who helps when he can, doing whatever he can – doing far more than Tobirama ever expected, really. Someone to help with the paperwork, someone to share the burden, someone to keep him company, even a body to warm him at night…

It really has helped.

Tobirama would have been dead without him.

It’s not – it’s not a brother, no. But it’s something.

To Tobirama’s surprise, it’s more than the stopgap he initially assumed it would be.

Indeed, now that Madara is not insane, not driven mad by pain and anger and loss, not burdened by the curse of hatred, Tobirama can see why Hashirama liked him so much. Clever and creative, with a wit biting almost to the point of pain; compassionate, in his own way, behind the mask of a misanthropic grouch he likes to cart around – fond of children, who are fond of him in return now that he no longer looks on the verge of murder.

Exceptionally devoted to the village he named.

(Just seeing Madara reminds Tobirama of the best parts of his brother. To watch Madara walk through the village is to see Hashirama do the same, a missing shadow, and Tobirama thought that would hurt, but – it doesn’t. It makes Tobirama feel like Hashirama's only in the next room hiding away from them, fearful of the paperwork they’re going to make him do, and pretending that that is the case makes the days just barely bearable.)

Maybe if Izuna’s death didn’t lie between them –

But no.

It does, it’s there, and for all that Tobirama has retroactively learned regret, sometimes plays with seals that verge on breaking the flow of time itself if only he could go back to fix it, he can’t. He will always be the man who murdered Madara’s brother, and he can’t change that.

He can’t make Madara forget it, and that means it’s pointless to hope – to dream that they could ever be more than they are.

More than just a stopgap.

Maybe things would be different, if they _were_ more than that – but they’re not.

And so the decision is easy.

Easier than it should be.

_I’m sorry, Madara._

Tobirama promised the man that he would never to turn his sword against himself, and he intends to keep that promise – but there are times when a sacrifice is called for, and Tobirama would never sacrifice his students if he could sacrifice himself instead.

They're all exhausted by now, running on empty. Kiri has sent so many more shinobi to ambush them than they'd ever anticipated could be possible.

They've left a mountain of corpses behind them, but there are still more - the strongest ones, the most ruthless ones, the ones who are waiting until they've been worn to nothing before striking, the ones who will undoubtedly boast about having caused the demise of Konoha's best even as they stand on the shoulders of all who came before.

They're so tired - and no one is more tired than Tobirama.

He's been tired for _so long_. Nothing has mattered since Hashirama died, not really - he loves his students, he loves his sister-in-law and her children, he loves his village, but it's not enough.

Nothing is enough.

Even Madara, Madara and their half-unspoken _thing_, their stopgap, their it-might-have-been-if-things-were-different –

Well, in the end, he's not enough, either.

Tobirama misses his brother.

He misses his brother _so much_.

He misses Hashirama’s enthusiasm and his charisma, the way he saw the future of their village, of peace, like it was a physical thing. Tobirama’s nothing like that – for him, though he tries his best, trying to create a peaceful future is like walking through a fog following a map you’ve only ever heard of second-hand, now that the one who could see the way is gone.

His guiding light is gone.

He wants, more than anything, to see his brother again.

Tobirama wants to be clear, though, that no matter what Madara heavily implies (and sometimes states outright), he is _not_ actively suicidal, or at least he’s not anymore. He hasn’t made any concrete plans to kill himself – and anyway, he _can’t_; he knows that, now that his mind is clear.

Hashirama entrusted the village to his hands, and he would never reject any gift his brother gave him, no matter how heavy the burden falls.

He will not let him down. He will not let the _village_ down.

(He might let Madara down.)

So, he’s not suicidal. And if he sometimes wishes there was a jutsu that could simply make him _not be_ anymore, without causing any inconvenience to anyone, well, that’s his own business.

It doesn’t matter as long as he doesn’t _do_ anything about it.

But when he and his students agree that the only way for most of them to survive is for one of them to act as a lure, even knowing that whoever volunteers for that will not come back alive –

The choice is easy.

It isn’t really suicide if it’s for a good reason, surely, and what better reason than to save his students’ lives?

(He knows he’s lying. He knows exactly what he’s doing, but – he’s so tired. He’s tired, and he misses his brother.)

His students look at him with hurt eyes, mouths shaping around cries of "no!" and "it's too soon!" in just the way his own did when it was Hashirama’s turn to leave him behind, but Tobirama knows that they'll be fine without him.

They’re strong and skilled, and he’s taught them everything he knows; they’ve been refusing to take the graduation exams despite his occasional hints that they were more than ready, but he suspects that has more to do with wanting to keep him as their teacher than anything else.

And as for the village, well – Madara will be a good Hokage, and, if he refuses, either Sarutobi or Kagami would be eminently suitable to stand for election, and he tells them as much.

They will tend carefully to Hashirama's village, make it prosper, and they will _live_, and that's all he really cares about now, isn't it? That's all.

He can die easy, knowing that everything that really means something will be taken care of.

(If he feels slightly bad about dying before helping Madara complete his Rinnegan project, well, at least they’ve made some progress; Madara can surely finish the rest himself, if at a slower pace. Maybe that will help compensate Madara for losing the only thing between him and the role of Hokage, which Madara – although eminently suited for – very loudly does not want.)

It won’t be a bad death.

He can die easy - and surely, _surely_ if he dies in the forest, defending his brother's village and its children, then fate will not be so cruel as to deny him the chance to see Hashirama one more time.

Surely.

The decision made, Tobirama sends his students away and turns to face his enemies, dropping into a ready position. He may not have anything to live for, but he is as stubborn and spiteful as he has ever been, and he will not simply give in and let them kill him.

He'll make them pay for the privilege in blood.

The ensuing fight is long and painful - the Kiri nin are cautious of him, even in his drained and weakened state, even with a stab wound in his side inhibiting his movements, even with his sword arm partially dislocated, rendering every strike agony. They hang back, slicing at him from a distance, and he's not fast enough right now to avoid them.

_Death of a thousand cuts_, he thinks at one point, nearly delirious from blood loss. _And I won't even be able to see the last one coming._

A nasty strike to his head has rendered him nearly blind, blood gushing out to drip into his already poor eyes; he's been using some of it to form bullets or dragons, red and fierce as iron, but his chakra is low, too low, and he can't spare the energy to wipe the blood away, much less heal himself.

He's going to die.

It's so close, he can almost _feel_ it - he even imagines he can feel Hashirama's so-familiar chakra, rich with growth and tasting of green, rough-textured like bark and soft as moss. It's all around him now, warm and welcoming.

No, death won't be so bad, if it means he gets to see Hashirama again.

Not so bad at all...

"This won't do, Tobirama," a voice says, welcome and beloved, and Tobirama _recognizes_ that voice.

How could he not? It sang him to sleep as a newborn; it was by his side his whole life; it has been so notable in its absence these past few years that just hearing it again is enough to send Tobirama to his knees, tears welling in his eyes and bile on his tongue.

It cannot be.

It _cannot be_.

And yet – who else could it be but him?

Who else, but –

"_Hashirama_," he croaks.

As if summoned by his words, the forest springs to life around him, roots and branches becoming weapons, the trees themselves reaching for the Kiri nin who blanch and try to run.

Try, because no one ever escapes the Mokuton when Hashirama is _really_ trying.

Tobirama can't tear his barely-seeing eyes away from his enemies as they die, the familiar sight of trees given life by Mokuton too dear a sight to miss. He can't bring himself to turn his head to look at his brother - his wonderful, beloved, _dead_ brother, who remembers his name and remembers he loves him and whose presence is so much everything that Tobirama wants that he's suddenly convinced that he's been trapped in the most terrible type of genjutsu.

He can't turn to look, because what if it's _not_ him?

What if it's a dream, a delusion, genjustu or even a henge – a pale imitation that's stolen his brother’s voice and power and is using it only to distract him?

Tobirama couldn't bear it.

If the Kiri nin wanted to make him die by his own hand, that would do it; they wouldn't need anything more than that. To give him the hope of Hashirama, and then to find out it was all a lie -

Even Madara in the worst of his madness would not have been so cruel.

Out of the corner of his eye, in the last dark blurry bit of vision he has left, he sees a shadow of something in the wood, large and overgrown and old, but before he can even wonder about it his senses are flooded with familiar chakra.

His brother’s chakra – his _brother_, unforgettable, vast and overwhelming, a little different perhaps than exactly what he remembers it being but still unmistakably _Hashirama_’s –

The next thing Tobirama knows he's being gathered up into Hashirama's arms, just the way he remembers from when he was just a toddler - lifted up in arms far larger than his own, surrounded and encompassed and protected by the feeling that has always meant safety.

No one could mimic that chakra, that feeling, not from such close range and against a sensor as strong as Tobirama, _no one_.

He’s overwhelmed by a wash of relief.

It’s not because he’s alive.

It’s because _Hashirama_ is.

Somehow, impossibly - he's alive.

Tobirama opens eyes that he must have closed at some point to look, terror gone and replaced by a budding sense of joy, suddenly eager to look - 

Except it seems he didn't close his eyes after all. No matter how he tries, he can’t see anything at all, the blood loss turning the world around him into vacant blackness as his consciousness leaves him.

But he can still hear.

"Sleep, Tobirama," his brother croons. "I'll take care of you - and I'll be here when you wake up."

Hashirama has always known exactly what to say.

Sleep snatches Tobirama away.


	7. Chapter 7 (interlude)

It sleeps, mostly. Sometimes, it has tea.

(The blood-soaked earth of the battlefield, rich with nitrogen from decayed flesh and the remnants of bone, makes for an excellent earthy tea, very stimulating. It would recommend it highly, but it doesn’t really talk to anyone anymore.)

But most of the time, it sleeps: sleeps, and grows, and watches.

It has a million eyes –

\- _studded throughout bark, centered on every leaf _–

And a million ears –

\- _grasses and reeds that catch every whisper and carry it back_ –

A million tongues –

\- _flowers unfurling to taste the changing chakra on the breeze –_

Even its brain has grown as vast as the forest itself, a network of interconnected mushrooms woven throughout the earth, neurons sparking like electricity through each fiber.

Nothing will escape it, should it need to act; nothing can evade its diligent watch. Time means nothing to it: it is, and was, and will be. Knowing that, it sleeps the sleep of the just.

It is here to keep the peace.

And it _has_.

Not in the little things, of course: the oaks squabble for territory as they always have, strangling acorns that fall too close to home; the willows hide their schemes behind their leaves, weeping by the riverbank; the mint and dandelions have formed an unholy alliance of conquering that has all the other flora in a tizzy to spread their seeds out on the wind and through the bodies of birds.

The animals still fight, too; the foxes and the bears, sharp-toothed; the rats and the squirrels, sharp-eyed; the rabbits with their vicious internecine strife.

And those strangest of animals, too, tall and two-legged and unbearably precious – they fight, too.

But there are no armies.

No battlefields.

No dead children, bodies crushed on the ground for someone else’s pointless hatred.

With that, it is content.

Yes, sometimes it thinks about doing more to stop the little fights, but -

(_You can't wrap people in cloth, anija! We have the right to choose. Sometimes we choose to fight, and you have to let us. Without competition and conflict, there can be no growth!_)

No, it is content as it is. There will be no war for as far as its reach stretches, miles upon miles, and it is still growing, its seeds carried by bird or fox or human for miles on end.

Soon - a few centuries or so, certainly no more than a few millennia, at most - it will be able to ensure there is no war anywhere at all: just life, and death, in an endless cycle.

Until then, it can sleep undisturbed -

But something disturbs it.

Somewhere in its great and terrible perception, it sees something.

Somewhere in the depths of its gargantuan mass, it hears something.

Somewhere in its vast and near-infinite memory, it _remembers_ something.

(_something white as snow and red as fire, infinitely precious, placed into his too-short arms and being told this is yours to protect, protect and love, and he did, he did love, it was for this love he first dreamed his dream of peace that seized him and would for the rest of his life_)

Tobirama.

Tobirama, a brother.

_His_ brother -

His brother, who is _dying_.

It has seen enough battlefields - _he_ has seen enough battlefields - to recognize the resignation that slows his brother's movements, the death-longing singing in his chakra, and _how can this be_?

Tobirama was supposed to be _safe_. Safe in the village created just for that purpose, entrusted to his hands. He's not supposed to be out here in the depths of the forest, feeding the ground his precious blood and giving his death away to strangers because he has nothing left to live for.

"This won't do, Tobirama," it says, stepping forth into the clearing.

With a thought the roots and the branches leap forward to act as its sword, just the way they once did for him on the battlefield, though it thinks with some disapproval that it could probably do better if it puts its now-near-infinite mind to it.

It's gotten so much more powerful than _he_ used to be.

It gathers his brother into its arms, crooning soft words, and Tobirama smiles blindly up at it, soft and vulnerable the way he sometimes, rarely, gets when they’re all alone, murmurs, "Missed you, anija..." before he falls asleep, and it knows it has done the right thing.

It has been sleeping, not understanding the meaning of time, but it remembers now.

Time doesn’t matter just because it’s passing, that much is true, but it does still matter.

Time matters because of who you spend it _with_.

Tobirama was always a good brother.

There’s no reason Tobirama can’t _still_ be its brother.

The way he was _his_ before.

That sounds nice.

Healing Tobirama’s injuries takes a mere thought – it may be attuned to flora rather than fauna, but the cell structure isn’t all that different, and his mastery of small details has gotten so much _better_ than before – and takes him somewhere else.

There’s a nice cavern it’s been sleeping in, deep in the earth: it is be dark there, dark and wet and _safe_, a perfect place for his brother to rest.

After all, if there’s one thing it can rely on, it thinks wryly even as it traces the circles under Tobirama’s eyes with a long fibrous finger, it’s that little brother has not gotten enough sleep again.

It’s only ten or so hours later that Tobirama stirs again – not _nearly_ enough, what has Tobirama been doing to his body? It’s as if he hasn’t slept right in _years_ – and the first thing he does is reach out blindly.

“Anija,” he says, sleep-drunk. His eyes are open, but blind: there is no light in this cavern, none at all, and he cannot see so much as the barest outline of anything. Not that that matters, to a sensor like him. “_Hashirama_.”

Yes.

Yes, that is right. That was his name.

Might as well be _its_ name as well.

Hashirama reaches out and lays a hand on its brother’s chest. Its hand is large, its fingers long, compared to what he once had, and it can cover almost all of Tobirama’s chest with just the one.

It likes the feeling of Tobirama’s heart beating beneath its palm.

Such a fragile organ, tenderly woven through with chakra, but supporting life that is so very precious.

“Missed you,” Tobirama slurs. He’s not really awake, only half-way there; a simple nudge of chakra will push him back into the sleep he so desperately needs. “So much. Missed you…even those – those _stupid_ hugs. Bear hugs, lifting me up like a kid…always pretended I hated them. Wasn’t proper. S’not true, though. Didn’t hate them. Wanted you to know that.”

Hashirama smiles. It always knew that: its prickly little brother who loved him so much. Loved him _too_ much, that Tobirama would deny himself the pleasure of something he enjoyed just to protect him from slights only imagined.

It is pleased to hear Tobirama admit it, though. As a reward, it gathers Tobirama into its arms again. “Sleep,” it says.

“Don’t want to. You’ll disappear.”

“I will be here.”

“Hallucination. Too much bloodloss. Maybe a genjutsu…”

Oh, Tobirama. Always so skeptical.

“I will be here,” it says again. “There is no genjutsu. I have only been sleeping, waiting for you to find me.”

Oddly, that explanation seems to be enough.

His brother must be very tired, to allow that.

“Missed you,” Tobirama sighs. “I’ve been so…I tried _so hard_, anija, really, truly I did. I took care of the village for you. But I missed you so much. Too much. Just wanted you again.”

Hashirama smiles wider than ever, smile curling up through his cheeks to his temples, a gaping wound stretched across the bark that forms his face until it nearly cracks the whole thing off. “I’m here now. But now you need to sleep – sleep and recover your strength.”

“You’ll still be here when I wake up?” Tobirama asks shyly, seeking verbal reassurance he hasn’t asked for since he was a toddler.

Since the first time Butsuma put a sword in his hand, and showed him how to use it.

(It’s been a lifetime since then, and Hashirama is very different now, but the memory _still_ makes something inside burn in anger.)

But it has no reason to be angry now. Tobirama is safe, his head is pressed to Hashirama’s chest, and the soft golden glow of Hashirama’s chakra, no longer capable of being fully contained to the inside of its body, falls upon his face. Tobirama’s red eyes, never strong, cannot see the light - Hashirama has muted the visible spectrum that it sometimes emits entirely to make sure its photosensitive brother’s rest is not disturbed, and the absolute darkness of the cavern muffles all other input. This is good, it thinks to itself, as the cool dark will sooth the strain those eyes have endured.

No, it is not angry.

Neither is it content.

It is _happy_.

“I’ll still be here,” Hashirama promises. “I’ll be here for you _forever_.”

The plants around them ripple in response to his vow, backed by all of his power, and in their frenzied approval they climb over the two of them: roots wrapping around Tobirama’s arms and legs and torso, moss leaping forward to cover him like a blanket, over-large mushrooms sprouting beneath his head as a pillow.

Tobirama sighs, a happy sigh, all the tension draining out of him, and falls back asleep.

Hashirama remains hunched over him, the smile on his face growing uncontrollably, extending all the way around its head and up and down its wooden cheeks to better express its joy, its jaw gaping open in a grin filled with teeth of needle-splinter-sharp points.

Yes.

This is good.

It had forgotten how much it liked having a brother.

Peace came first, of course, emblazoned as it is on its heart, but in the end some small part of its vast and endless memory reminds it the original purpose of his peace was for his brother, and it likes that thought. If at all possible, it would make sure that Tobirama would be safe and secure and peaceful in a way he never had a chance to be growing up.

And if the village wasn’t doing its job in caring for Tobirama?

_It would_.


	8. Chapter 8

"_No_."

"I'm not sure where you got the impression that you were being given a choice," Touka says dryly. Madara's actually grown moderately fond of her, beserker of a kunoichi that she is, over the last few years, but he's seriously considering whether blowing a fireball at her head would be considered overreacting. Sadly, it probably would. Whether that’s going to stop him is still up in the air. "You were the Nidaime's right hand. You're going on the ballot."

"You can't actually _make_ me be Hokage," Madara says.

"Why not?" Touka asks, merciless as ever. "We made Hashirama do it."

Madara...really doesn't like the sound of that, because if you look at it in a certain light, they _did_. Not a promising precedent.

"I'm objecting to the fact that there's a ballot at _all_," he says instead. "We don't even have a body -"

"His students were very clear about the circumstances he was left in - and that was _two weeks ago_."

"It's _Tobirama_! If anyone can pull some sort of ridiculous nonsense out of thin air -"

"He had an opportunity to give his life for the village," Touka says, and she doesn't _mean_ to be cruel with it, that's the worst part. He knows that her cousin’s suffering has hurt her as much as it's grown to hurt Madara. "A justified opportunity. You know as well as I do that he would take it."

Madara does. But he's had _enough_.

Enough of pointless losses, enough of _war_, shocking as it is to say. They're going to make Kiri pay for this, of course they are, but -

All Madara wants is to get to bury his friend (his almost-something-more) this time.

To mourn _properly_.

(Not to be the last one of them left standing.)

"I'm going to go find his body," he announces.

Touka sighs. "Listen -"

"Put my name on the stupid ballot, I don't care," Madara interrupts. "But I'm _going_. This isn't like Hashirama, disappearing into nothingness; Tobirama was fighting flesh-and-blood shinobi. Either Kiri left his body behind for sky to bury or they took it back with them. There's even a chance - marginal, I admit, but a chance - that they managed to take him alive. I'm going to make sure that's not what happened."

Touka's frowning, but she seems more inclined to listen.

Good, because Madara's not going to take no for an answer.

"We already have an empty mausoleum for Hashirama," he points out. "As you're always observing, twice makes for a tradition. We wouldn't want _that_."

Touka unwillingly snorts. "Fine," she says. "Go. But mind that you come back. You may be old for a frontliner -"

Madara is not _that_ old!

"- but your name still means something in terms of village defense," she concludes. "Don't let these Kiri bastards write both your names on their wall of trophies or we’ll never hear the end of it."

"I won't," Madara promises.

He leaves the village three hours later, after giving Hikaku - his second, now that Izuna isn't there - notice of his sudden promotion to temporary acting head of the Uchiha clan.

He makes good time. Tobirama's students (they reminded him so much of ducklings, following along behind Tobirama, that he had to remind himself not to call them that to their faces) had given him a pretty good idea of where they'd been when they'd split up, and while Tobirama would have branched off from there, Madara is certain that he can track him.

After all, after all this time spent sparring against Tobirama - and might he say, his respect for Izuna's skills was never higher than when he was fighting the man who was his brother’s opponent - Madara knows what the aftereffects of his jutsus look like better than most.

He forces himself to pace himself on the way, though. As much as he would like this to be a rescue mission, requiring full-bore speed, it's not.

It's just retrieval.

Tobirama’s already gone.

Why is it, he wonders, that every time he starts to admit to himself that he could grow to love someone, they die?

What he has with Tobirama isn’t about the village anymore, not about Hashirama, it's about Tobirama himself - he can admit that, if only to himself, now that Tobirama is gone.

Tobirama is irritating, overly literal and works too much, and Madara had already been missing him like fire even before he’d gotten word that he was gone forever.

But really, Madara’s losses are starting to be too many to count. _Izuna_, ever a gaping wound, was bad enough, but then he lost Hashirama, too, and now Tobirama as well...is it him? Is he the connecting factor, the bad luck?

Was it Izuna’s ghost come back to snatch away any chance of the new happiness he’d just about nearly convinced himself he could find in the softening of Tobirama’s eyes?

Still, pacing or no pacing, Madara is still who he is. He makes good time and, sure enough, it only takes a day or so to locate what must have been the battle site.

The first thing Madara sees is the corpses of Kiri nin piled up and twisted into a defensive wall and he can't help a smile: Tobirama's total disregard for the bodies of the dead never fails to amaze him.

Then he takes a deep breath, fortifying himself, and looks around further.

And that -

That’s when things stop making sense.

He _knows_ these corpses.

Madara never doubted that Tobirama would put up a fight to the end, passively suicidal or not - the man was far too spiteful to do anything less, and really, it's Madara's own fault that he didn't force his clan to make peace earlier because Tobirama and Izuna were two peas in a pod when it came to that. Even less did he doubt that such a fight would have a significant death count, enough to ferry Tobirama to the Pure Lands in style.

But - those were Kinkaku and Ginkaku. Amazingly strong, but ruthless, and cowards to boot: they would have hung back until the very end, letting Tobirama tire himself on their soldiers and moving in to claim the final kill only when his chakra was totally depleted and his body broken.

If _they_ were dead...

Madara casts his eyes across the rest of the battlefield with hope rising like a fire in his belly. These are _all_ of Kiri's strongest, all the ones they devoted to this battle - Kagami had returned with his Mangekyo sparked from Tobirama's loss, and he'd had his Sharingan active the entire battle; he'd given Madara a list of every shinobi on Kiri's side, and this is _everyone_.

And - and here was what really didn't make sense - their deaths were _wrong_.

Tobirama had attained mastery over all elements, ridiculous overachiever that he was, but like most shinobi he fell back on his natural affinities when cornered. Water and lightning and sword - those were the signs of Tobirama's fighting, and while there were a good number of those lying around, that wasn't what had killed the majority of the Kiri warriors.

No - what had killed them was _wood_.

Wood splinters grown through the mouth or the back of the neck to pierce the brain; wooden spears to impale the heart; tree roots wrapped around the throat to strangle...

Madara fought the Mokuton for most of his life. He, more than anyone, knows what a battlefield looks like, after; he knows how to recognize the bodies it leaves behind.

But it's impossible.

Hashirama is gone, and for all their mastery or science, neither Tobirama nor Madara has any access to that mysterious Senju bloodline limit.

At least, Madara _thought_ they didn't. Has Tobirama been holding out on him?

Madara licks suddenly dry lips. It suddenly occurs to him that it doesn't _matter_, not really. What matters is - if Tobirama _did_ figure out a way to use the Mokuton - if every single one of the Kiri shinobi are dead -

Tobirama might be _alive_.

He could be dead of chakra exhaustion, too, but Tobirama had once explained - on one of those dark nights when everything seemed bleak and they both missed Hashirama like drowning men missed air, when they sat together on the roof and looked down at the village they'd created together and drank Hashirama's favorite sake to pretend that he had only just gone down the hall to get more - that he'd deliberately sealed away an infinitely small portion of his chakra for just such an eventuality.

Tobirama had been the only Senju capable of giving Hashirama a good spar, he’d explained, in the years before Madara was available as anything other than an enemy on the battlefield and he'd been determined to be what his brother needed, even if it meant going far, too far, beyond what he could handle. The seal was designed to activate in the event that all his chakra was gone, sending Tobirama into a deathlike coma meant to conserve his strength until he could awaken once more. He'd understood the risks, of course, but he was a Senju: he had no fear of being buried alive in the welcoming earth, should it come to that.

Tobirama, alive..!

Madara curses himself for not having listened to his instincts and run here as quickly as possible, and immediately starts searching the area.

It occurs to him as he does that the bodies around him are decayed more than they should be - moss and lichen and mushrooms eating up the soft flesh, bones already showing - and he wonders if Tobirama has played some trick with time to accomplish it.

Well, if Tobirama is alive, Madara will just have to ask him about it.

The possibility excites him.

He starts a systematic search of the area, straining his sensor abilities (above-average when compared to anyone but Tobirama) to the limit and covering each twist and turn of land, careful to test each square inch for jutsu designed to hide things or confuse the senses.

Even so, it takes nearly two days of nothing, nothing, and _more_ nothing – no sign of Tobirama, but no sign of a body, either, and that gives him hope – before he finally catches a break.

It’s faint – _extremely_ faint – but Madara’s learned Tobirama’s signature as well as his own through the long nights of working on the Rinnegan together, and it’s unmistakable.

It’s Tobirama.

He’s alive!

Madara whoops, entirely undignified, and dashes off in that direction. It’s not far away, but it’s deep, _very_ deep. Tobirama must have found some cave or cavern to crawl into to recuperate.

It takes some searching to find it – actually, Madara doesn’t find a proper entrance at all and ends up just burrowing into the ground with a doton jutsu – but soon enough he’s in the cavern, which is dark as pitch, and he can _hear_ Tobirama’s voice distantly up ahead of him.

He's there!

He’s _alive_!

He’s – recounting a story about the village?

“– and then Madara says, ‘You don’t _actually_ think that, do you’,” Tobirama is saying. He sounds…happy? Extremely tired, but oddly happy. Perhaps being so close to death has reminded him of all the reasons he has to be alive. “And then, of course, the Hyuuga leader puffs himself up and says, ‘Are you calling me a liar’ and Madara responds ‘Listen, if what you want is to start measuring dicks I’m willing to pull mine out right now –’”

…why is Tobirama telling _that_ story.

He _promised_ to stop telling people that story.

(Actually, he’d dealt with the situation as sternly as ever and then, the second the still-blustering Hyuuga had left, put his face on the desk and let his shoulders shake with laughter for nearly ten minutes, which had been the one bright spot of a fairly awful day. And then Tobirama couldn’t even look at any Uchiha or Hyuuga for the next week after without smirking. But he _had_ said he would stop telling everyone about it eventually, though he’d refused to indicate when ‘eventually’ would be.)

“– yes, I _know_, right? Much less shy, especially compared to when he was a child –”

Ugh. Speaking of Senju spreading stories they promised they wouldn’t, has Hashirama told _everyone_ about that particular incident? Madara really hopes not.

Still: embarrassing stories or not, Tobirama’s alive and that means _everything_.

“Tobirama!” Madara calls out.

Silence. And then – “Madara? Is that you?”

“Yes! Hold up, I’m coming towards you now.”

It’s harder than it looks, given how dark it is in the cave even with the advantage of the Sharingan; Tobirama must be entirely blind. A strange place for a suiton user to hide, deep in the ground, but Madara supposes that growing up in a doton-inclined clan might have that effect.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Tobirama says. His voice is slurring a little from exhaustion – and blood loss, undoubtedly; he can’t be fully healed yet given the amount of blood he left behind on the battlefield. “You’ll be so happy when you find out, just like me…”

Madara has half a second to wonder what Tobirama could have found down in a cave like this that he thinks would make Madara happy - another stone tablet, perhaps? - before he makes his way into the cavern where Tobirama waits.

He sees -

Tobirama.

Alive, wonderful alive and somehow, after all this time and despite all odds, beloved. He's smiling, that crooked little lift of his lips that softens his whole face, and he's - he's -

He's _covered_ in roots.

Twining around his legs, resting on his shoulders, wrapped in a constrictor's embrace around his chest and narrow waist, even woven through his pale hair - everywhere.

And they're not normal roots, either: to his Sharingan, they shine bright in the dark, loaded heavy with chakra of a serene glowing gold that feels bafflingly familiar.

But at the same time, Madara's sure he's never seen anything like it before.

"Madara, I'm so glad you're here," Tobirama says, and he looks pleased, more than Madara has ever seen him, his eyes curved up into crescents with joy even though they are still only half-open, heavy with the call of sleep, and staring in Madara's general direction in a way that suggests Tobirama can't see but is relying on his sensing. Tobirama then reaches up a hand and puts it on the root on his shoulder, a familiar gesture, almost the way he would if it was someone's hand resting there - someone he liked, of course, because the vast majority of people would have their hand cut off for daring to place it there. Madara'd only recently been inducted into the ranks of those who could do it with impunity. "You'd never have believed it otherwise."

"Believed...?"

Tobirama’s lips stretch in a real smile, which for him is the equivalent to beaming. "I found Hashirama!"

Madara stares at his friend and sometimes-lover, wondering if he'd gone mad.

What in the _world_ is he talking about? Is he suggesting that he found his brother's corpse and somehow pulled the Mokuton out of it – fine, that does sound like Tobirama, designing some forbidden jutsu that -

Something moves in the dark.

Madara's attention had been focused on Tobirama, overly focused in his relief, but his Sharingan misses nothing: his head snaps in the direction of the moving roots that someone is sending his way in some sort of large lumbering cluster -

Those...aren't roots.

Or, rather, they are.

But they shouldn’t be.

Gnarled bark and roots twist together to create a terrible mockery of a human body; it's the exact opposite of a wood clone, which accurately formed to resemble a person but living only to the extent of the chakra lent to it - this _thing_ is bursting with life, with that strange gold chakra, and even as Madara watches a thin layer of moss grows over one 'arm' while a scattering of blue flowers appear to curl over the thing's shoulders. Its hands are too large to match the rest of its body, too-long splintering fingers with web-like veins running through every elongated joint; its legs are titanic, sinking deep into the ground like ancient tree trunks.

And its head: lined by a heavy fall of something not quite branches and not quite leaves, thin and willow-like and only vaguely resembling hair, its misshapen face has too much jaw, gaping open in something like a too-wide smile to reveal teeth made of needle-sharp splinters, and the eerie eyes, dark brown with a pupil of gold instead of black, are lined with dark red marks like heavy slashes seeping sap instead of blood.

It's a _monster_.

"Tobirama -" Madara starts, then stops.

Marks around the eyes.

Dark marks on that ‘face’, streaks of color, and in the center of the thing's forehead are two concentric circles.

No.

_No_.

The thing before him shifts forward, all of it moving at once and leaning towards him over Tobirama's smiling unseeing unknowing blindness.

"I'm so glad you're here, Madara," the thing says, and the familiar voice it uses is only a little distorted (too many tones all at once, previously absent harmonics, a low rumbling pitch) from the one Madara once loved so dearly. "I missed you!"

And as much as Madara tries to convince himself that the whole horrific mess is just a monster, just a mimicry, just an illusion of the worst sort -

It's still recognizable as his best friend.


End file.
